Edward Lee - Monster Lake

The briefcase! Terri realized.

Maybe those words were in the briefcase too.

And—

There’s only one way to find out, she told herself.

Right now, Uncle Chuck wasn’t in the house; he was picking Terri’s mother up at work.

She could sneak out of her room right now, couldn’t she?

And look in the briefcase herself…

««—»»

One thing in Terri’s favor was this: if Uncle Chuck came back home unexpectedly, she’d be able to hear the car pull into the driveway. So she’d have time to get back into her room before he came in. But she knew she couldn’t fool around, she had to be quick about it, and of course, the first thing she had to do was find the briefcase. She brought a Bic pen and a piece of notebook paper with her, stuck them in the pocket of her shorts. Then, very quietly, she opened her door and left her bedroom.

The house seemed very quiet right now, maybe because she was doing something she knew she wasn’t supposed to be doing. As always, the floor of the foyer went creeeeak! when she stepped on it, and that reminded her of how Patricia had scared her this morning, by hiding in the coat closet. Terri could only guess that the wooden tiles of the foyer had gotten old, and that’s why they creaked whenever someone stepped on them.

The hall to the kitchen was dark. She tiptoed quickly across the carpet and slipped into the kitchen. She wished she’d thought of this before; she could’ve been looking for the briefcase earlier, while she was on the phone with Patricia. Darn! Why didn’t I think of that? she scolded herself. She pranced around the kitchen, looking everywhere, but—

Uncle Chuck’s briefcase wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Where is it!

Terri looked all over the place: the kitchen table, the big veneered walnut cabinet her mother kept her bills in, the closet, even the regular cabinets. She couldn’t find the briefcase anywhere!

It must not be here, she finally realized. And that could only mean:

It must be somewhere else, like maybe in the dining room, or—

Terri’s thoughts stopped short.

Maybe it’s in his bedroom…

She searched the dining room from top to bottom. The briefcase wasn’t there.

Now this really was risky. Going into Uncle Chuck’s bedroom without his permission. But Terri had no choice; she needed to look in that briefcase, and this was the only way. She walked quickly back down the carpeted hallway, put her hand on the knob to Uncle Chuck’s bedroom.

She paused, took a deep breath—

Here goes nothing, she thought.

—and entered the room.

Uncle Chuck’s bedroom was neat as a pin. The bed was made, the fern-green drapes were tied open, showing the sunny front yard. All of Chuck’s clothes hung neatly in the closet, like in the men’s section of a department store. But Terri’s eyes glanced about the room in total dread—

Where’s the briefcase!

She didn’t see it anywhere! Where else could it be? It wasn’t on the floor anywhere; it wasn’t in the closet. If she didn’t find it this minute, she knew she’d have to give up because Uncle Chuck would be back soon, with her mother. That’s all I need, Terri thought. First I get caught in the boathouse, and now I’m about to get caught in Uncle Chuck’s bedroom!

She searched the room three times—no briefcase. She was so frustrated she wanted to throw her arms up and shriek. But just as she was about to check the room one more time, she turned, and her foot touched something—

What? she thought slowly.

Her foot touched something under the bed.

Terri dropped to her knees very quickly, and pulled up the bed’s fluffy comforter, and there it was—

Finally! I found it!

The black-leather briefcase had been slipped under the bed, almost as if it had been deliberately hidden.

Hidden, Terri thought.

But it had been hidden. Uncle Chuck had obviously slid the briefcase under the bed so no one would see it. No one, as in me, Terri realized. There was no one else to hide it from. Uncle Chuck must have suspected that I might come in here, Terri easily recognized, so he stuck the briefcase under the bed where I wouldn’t be able to see it . And this could only mean what she already suspected: Her mother and Uncle Chuck knew all about the weird things going on around here, and they were deliberately trying to cover everything up to keep Terri from finding out about any of it.

Well, she thought. Not anymore.

She paused for another moment, gazing down excitedly at the front edge of the briefcase.

Yes, it was exciting.

Exciting to know that, very possibly, all the answers to all the questions she had were right here at her fingertips.

And it’s time to find those answers, she decided.

She slid the black briefcase out from under the bed, pushed the two black-metal latches with her thumbs— click-click! —and opened the briefcase.

««—»»

The first thing Terri saw when she opened her uncle’s briefcase were several glossy textbooks with very complicated titles on the covers, titles she didn’t understand. She wished she could look through the books but she knew there wasn’t time: Uncle Chuck would be home soon, and so would Terri’s mother. Instead Terri lifted the books up and looked under them.

A spiral notepad lay there, just like the kind Terri herself used for her schoolwork. The cover of the notepad was turned back, and she could see handwriting on the first page.

Uncle Chuck’s handwriting, Terri could tell immediately. And then there was something else in the notepad she recognized just as swiftly—

The words! she celebrated.

She remembered now; seeing them again sparked her memory instantly.

The words she’d seen on the computer screen in the boathouse, plus the words on the glass tanks and the labels on the weird glass bottles full of gunk.

Here they were again. The first line read:

LOT 2b: TRANSMISSION FAILURE

Then the second line read:

LOT 3: POSITIVE REAGENT

TRANSMISSION OF GENETIC

CARNIVORE MUTATION.

And written closer to the bottom of the page, still in her Uncle Chuck’s handwriting, was:

COUNTER-REAGENT 6b ADMINISTERED

…and then yesterday’s date.

Exactly as she remembered from her quick trip to the boathouse this morning.

Okay, Terri told herself. You’ve finally found the words, but you still don’t know what they mean, so—

She took out her Bic pen and the piece of paper from her shorts, and quickly wrote the words down.

That done, she realized time was getting short. I’ve got to get out of here now. She glanced uneasily at the door. They’ll be coming home any minute.

Using her good sense, then, she was about to put the textbooks back and then close the briefcase, but something made her hesitate. Terri’s curiosity was so strong, sometimes she simply couldn’t resist it.

Can’t hurt to just take a quick look, she thought.

She picked up the notepad from out of the briefcase. Most of the pages had been folded over and she began to flip through it from the top page.

Pretty much the same thing as the last page, she concluded as her eyes scanned down each handwritten line. She also recognized her mother’s handwriting on some of the lines; Terri didn’t find it difficult to recognize her mother and Uncle Chuck’s handwriting because she’d seen it so many times when they left notes for her in the kitchen, and now she saw that her mother had written in the notepad just as much as Uncle Chuck had, if not more. But this was no surprise really, because Terri knew they worked together in the boathouse frequently.